Teacher Retention and Merit Pay: Trends and Patterns of Job Separation

• In Event: 68.029 - Key Teacher Evaluation/Accountability System Components: Using Diverse Methods to Inform Practice and Policy

Abstract

Purpose

Concerns about poor student performance have fueled discussion about improving access to high-quality teachers (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2010; Hanushek, 2007) through improved recruitment and retention practices. However, it is difficult to retain teachers, particularly in high-needs and high-poverty schools (Boyd, Grossman, Ing, Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2011; Smith & Ingersoll, 2004). In this particular state, teacher retention is one of the state’s most major educational issues statewide; hence, for this study researchers documented the patterns and trends of job separation (or, conversely, retention) of teachers in the state’s most high-needs public schools. Researchers also related these patterns to bonus compensation systems, as related to the state’s teacher evaluation/accountability system, administered in the above-mentioned schools in 2012-2015 school years.

Perspectives

There is a substantial amount of research on teacher retention and the effects of financial incentives on teacher motivation, yet research that relates financial incentives to teacher retention is still emerging. Prior research on teacher retention has accordingly varied regarding teachers’ motivation to stay within or leave a position, teachers’ opinions about the profession, and teachers’ perceptions towards schools and administrators, to name a few (e.g., Boyd et al., 2011; Ladd, 2011).
Methods

Researchers employed descriptive and inferential analyses (e.g., t-tests for statistical significance and ANOVAs), and researchers used methods of regression and factor analyses to factor out characteristics of teachers that seemed to be the major determinants of job separation. Researchers used the data from the TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement) (NIET, 2011) collected over the 2012-13, 2013-14, and 2014-15 academic years, which included 5,133 teacher observations from 2,727 unique teachers across the three academic years, and across 10 school districts from throughout the state. Data included teachers’ observational scores, value-added scores, the dollar amount of merit pay that individual teachers were awarded, as well teachers’ job category (i.e., career, mentor, or master teacher), grade, subject, and whether teachers taught classes via which they could be held accountable using the state’s large-scale standardized test system (i.e., for value-added calculations).

Results

Researchers found systematic differences between teachers who remained within the sample for all three years, compared to those who were in the sample for only one or two years. More specifically, researchers found that teachers who remained in the sample for all three years had significantly higher value-added scores and received significantly more merit pay than teachers who were in the sample for only one or two years.

Significance

Researchers documented the most recent (2012-2015) patterns and trends of teacher retention in this particular state’s most high-needs public schools, and researchers linked these patterns to a performance-based compensation system. Findings add yet more evidence to the increasing body of research analyzing the teacher labor market and the role of financial incentives in education, whereas in this case evidence also suggest that teachers who stay teaching, might be improving over time, hence the higher value-added, but especially observational scores researchers observed. This might also evidence a dynamic interaction between financial incentives and over-time improvement.

Authors

• Margarita Pivovarova, Arizona State University - Tempe

• Tray Geiger, Arizona State University